The present invention is directed to bicycles and, more particularly, to a bicycle disk brake pad.
Disk brake pads normally pinch a disk brake rotor that rotates along with the wheel in order to brake the wheel. Conventionally known disc brake pads of this type sometime comprise a sintered metal friction member bonded to a stainless steel backing plate, for example. The sintered metal friction member usually is produced by diffusion bonding while simultaneously bonding it to the back plate. More specifically, the backing plate is copper plated, and then the metal that is to form the friction member is sintered and bonded to the copper plated surface by exposing the entire structure to elevated temperatures of as much as 900° C. Because the backing plate is exposed to such high temperatures, the metals that can be used to form the backing plate are limited to those with a relatively high specific gravity, such as stainless steel alloys, etc., which are resistant to those temperatures. This makes it impossible to reduce the weight of brake pads, which would be particularly desirable in bicycles.
One possibility to reduce the weight of the brake pad is to adhesively bond a sintered metal friction member to a lightweight backing plate. However, friction members that are adhesively bonded to the backing plate may have poor separation strength and unsatisfactory bonding strength during hard braking when the brake pad may be subjected to temperatures of around 300° C.